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by queen_scribbles



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen, Homecoming, family fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 23:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12641451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_scribbles/pseuds/queen_scribbles
Summary: Pillars weekly prompt #10: Hunt’s End. I love Sagani, so the chance to write something focused on her was too good to pass up. I used Tavi’s canon for the choices and stuff, but it barely gets alluded to, and that’s on purpose. This is for Sagani, not the Watcher.





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**Author's Note:**

> Pillars weekly prompt #10: Hunt’s End. I love Sagani, so the chance to write something focused on her was too good to pass up. I used Tavi’s canon for the choices and stuff, but it barely gets alluded to, and that’s on purpose. This is for Sagani, not the Watcher.

 

The columns of smoke rising from the large meeting hall were visible long before the rest of Massuk was even a smudge on the horizon. Sagani felt a weight lift off her heart at the sight.

_Home._ After five years--and several additional months--it was finally close enough she could almost smell the tang of hearth fires. Itumaak danced ahead a few paces and looked at her expectantly.

Saani shook her head and laughed. “All that time spent warnin’ Edér you’re not a pet and here you’re actin’ like a lap dog.”

Itumaak sniffed as if insulted and kept walking. Sagani grinned as she followed the fox, feeling the weight of her bow, her pack, all the more presently because she was _almost home_. She watched snowflakes swirl on an eddying gust and prayed the weather would hold just a few more hours. Pulling up her hood, Sagani set her eyes on the smoke columns and kept walking.

><

The weather held. Sometimes teasing with flurries and extra wind, but the sky remained a cheerful blue with only scattered clouds so she wasn’t too worried. She was only a mile out now, anyway, with numerous rocky abutments lining the road in to the village. Even if things took a sudden dive for the worse, she could still find her way now.

Itumaak growled softly, staring at the nearest of the rock towers. Even as Sagani followed his gaze, a young huntress emerged onto the path. She carried a brace of hares and was glancing back at the huge white wolf following in her tracks. When Itumaak’s growl registered, she snapped back around, dropping the hares and reaching for her bow, but froze when she saw Sagani. They both stood staring for a long moment.

“Your reflexes have gotten better,” Sagani commented dryly, both to break the silence and fight back the choking well of emotion rising at the back of her throat.

“I had a good teacher,” the huntress managed, then Itumaak yipped and the spell was broken. She threw herself forward, running the last few paces that separated them, and threw her arms around Sagani, who returned the hug with equal fervor. “I’ve missed you, Mama. We all have.”

“Not half as much as I’ve missed you,” Sagani whispered, and her daughter squeezed tighter.

“But you’re back? For... for good?” she asked, hesitating as if reluctant to be that selfish.

“Yes, Yakona, for good,” Sagani promised, finally letting go and taking a step back to look at her. She looked like a proper huntress, hair pulled back in a bun, dark paint streaked below her eyes to fight the glare of sun off snow. “What d’you think are the odds we can sneak in so I can see your father and brothers as well before everyone starts clamoring for me and my story?”

Yakona laughed as she went back to pick up her catch. “Not great. There was a caravan a few days ago that reported seeing ogres to the west. The elders doubled the watch and they’re all on the alert.”

“Well, then.” Sagani sighed, bracing herself. She was happy to be home, would be thrilled to see all her neighbors again, happy to share the story of her adventures, but what she really wanted was to see Kallu. And Najuo, and Malaak. Hear what her children had been up to while she was searching for Persoq. “I guess there’s no point in delaying.”

“Nope,” Yakona said with a smile. “Besides, the faster you get the initial wave of celebration over with, the faster you can get a quiet moment with Papa.”

“You’ve grown wise in my absence,” Sagani teased, unable to wipe the smile from her face. Even knowing she would have to delay the reunion with the rest of her family couldn’t completely dampen the joy of being home.

“Papa did his best,” Yakona smiled, brushing dark wisps of hair back from her eyes.

“He did a good job,” Sagani said, laughing as they resumed their path toward Massuk. Itumaak and Yakona’s wolf fell in step behind them and mother and daughter headed home.

><

The ‘initial wave’, as Yakona had called it, was every bit as overwhelming as Sagani anticipated. Word of her homecoming spread like oil over water once the watchmen caught sight of them and soon what felt like all of Massuk was clamoring to welcome her home and hear of her adventures, what Persoq had said when she found him again, people she’d met, every detail of her last five years.

But all of the boisterous joy faded to muted shades of grey when Kallu pushed his way through the crowd and pulled her into a bear hug. Sagani laughed and held him tight as he picked her up and kissed her, neither caring about the size of their audience. Even as he set her on her feet again, Najuo and Malaak emerged from the throngs of people, and the whole family lumped together for a hug. They exchanged no words, but they would have been lost under the noise of the crowd, anyway.

Finally, a couple of the elders managed to regain some quiet, and announced they would hold a feast in place of the evening meal, where Sagani could recount her journey. Until then, she could spend some time with her family, catching up.

><

She didn’t tell them of her hunt for Persoq, except to mention that she’d found him. And she didn’t really talk about stopping the Hollowborn Plague and Thaos. That was the Watcher’s story. Instead, she talked about the people. Merchants and seers and charlatans, farmers and barkeeps and travelers whose paths crossed her own. Inevitably, she worked her way around to the companions she’d met in the Dyrwood.

Edér’s persistent desire to pet Itumaak ( _”But Mama, Itumaak **bites** ,” Malaak protested. And Sagani smiled, because her youngest had more sense of the danger than a full grown farmer_), Durance’s ranting, Hiravias and his jokes ( _No, she wouldn’t share any; they weren’t appropriate_ ).

Pallegina’s drive to do right by both her ducs and the world, Kana’s songs and unflagging optimism, Aloth’s sharp wit buried beneath a layer of caution and manners thicker than Naasitaq’s ice shelves. Maneha’s sarcasm and thirst for adventure, Zahua’s regret for his lost people( _she left off his fondness for curse words. Yakona might be grown now, but the boys were still young enough she didn’t want to encourage anything_ ), the Watcher’s ability to read souls like a huntress reading tracks. 

When Sagani finished telling them about the people she’d met, she sat and listened as they filled her in on what they’d done while she was away. Yakona had trained herself into a huntress, using what Sagani had taught her and her own instincts rather than seek a new mentor. ( _Sagani couldn’t have been more proud; self-sufficiency was an important trait for a huntress_ ) Najuo had picked up whittling as a hobby a couple years after she left, and proudly showed off some of the pieces he’d done, handing her a pendant carved into a lopsided fox pawprint. ( _”It’s for you, Mama. One of the first things I made.” Sagani immediately threaded it with a leather cord and pulled it on as a necklace. “I love it. You’re very talented. I know someone else who whittles, and she’d be impressed at your progress.”_ ) Malaak was doing well in school, and loved building things. He was young yet, but Kallu informed her that a couple of Massuk’s builders had expressed a willingness to apprentice him when he was a little older. ( _Sagani was thrilled he had an idea what he wanted to do so young; not many did._ )

After their children had all poured out their past five years, Sagani turned to Kallu. “And what about you? What did you do, aside from an excellent job raising our children?”

“Missed you,” he said matter-of-factly, smiling at the compliment as he squeezed her hand.

“ _Kallu_.”

“I did,” he shrugged, dark eyes honest as the day she’d married him. “I’ve been carrying on with life, taking care of the kids, business are usual as I could, but I missed you every day.”

“Well, you don’t have to anymore,” Sagani said pragmatically. She glanced down at their intertwined hands, thoughts drifting to the cold lump of adra in her pocket and how far away it had taken her. “I’m not going anywhere for quite a while.”

“Promise, Mama?” Malaak piped up, sidling close.

Sagani ruffled his hair with her free hand. “I promise, little bear.”

She meant it. The thrill of the hunt was... less for her now. She wanted to stay with her family, watch her children grow up. The feeling only settled more firmly as she watched Yakona help Najuo carry his carvings back to his room. Malaak cuddled in even closer, Kallu leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, and Sagani smiled.

It was good to be home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is off the family-centric epilogue, where she decides to retire from hunting and stays in Massuk, but I pulled some things for Yakona and Malaak from the ending where Sagani has to search another fifteen years for Persoq. I went back and forth on how old to make the kids, cuz we get a couple hints that at least a couple are youngish(her “Son of a moosefucker!” banter with Aloth comes to mind), but nothing concrete. So I rolled with Yakona being young adult and the boys being pre/young teen.


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